HOBBYCRAFT 1:72 DHC-4 CARIBOU
Reviewer: Nick Hall (dixhall@hotmail.com)
The DeHavilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou is regarded as one of the best STOL transports of all time. It derived from DeHavilland's Canada decision in 1956 to build a transport with the carrying load of a DC-3 and the STOL capabilities of the DHC-2 Beaver. The US Army took delivery of its Caribous from 1961 and in 1962 these were given the designation CV-2A, and after evaluating five examples of the aircraft the US Army adopted the transports as standard equipment, and the next batch were designated CV-2B. Another major user of the Caribou is the Royal Australian Air Force who have exploited the carrying and STOL capabilities to a massive extent in the Australian outback where airstrips are small, and in neighbouring New Guinea. The RAAF and US Army CV-2B Caribous participated in the Vietnam War, which this Hobbycraft kit attempts to replicate.
Hobbycraft have charged big bucks for this model and given that you could reasonably expect a few extras within, but as you will find out in this review, you will be paying a high price for an average kit. The kit comes packaged in a large box which includes two sprues of light gray molded injected plastic. The plastic is flash-free and consists of finely engraved panel lines. There are just three steps with large diagrams for the instructions and no internal colour detail is provided. Reference material will need to be sought to get the correct colours therein.
Construction starts with the cockpit and you are only provided with very general detail - seats, control wheels and instrument panel. Since, as pointed out above, there is no info provided in the instructions about what colour to paint the interior, you will need your reference material to help you out. Unfortunately I can only get my hands on a B&W cockpit photo which was of little help and had trouble finding reliable reference material. I ended up painting the interior a medium to dark grey with black panels and control wheels. Another note to point out is that there is very little detail as far as instrumentation is concerned so for a good representation it needs to be scratchbuilt, since at the time this review went to air there was no aftermarket source or resin kit that I know of you could use (you might want to check around though in case things get lucky).
Next you move onto glueing the fuselage halves together and if you are like me, you would be very disappointed with the fact that the rear cargo door is non-positionable - ie: molded closed. There is also no interior cargo bay detail as everything behind the cockpit inside the fuselage is simply empty. Unfortunately, Hobbycraft have the monopoly of the 1/72 Caribou market at the moment, that I am aware of, so were able to simply produce a kit enough to satisfy us who have had this aircraft on our want list for sometime and overprice it, without adding in the extra bits to make the model really something. I thought about cutting out the door and scratch build the interior but realised that the task would be enormous and I just didn't have the motivation or time to do it. When you attach the windows (see next paragraph) you are left with an empty space that you can see into from outside. The Instructions say to place a red cargo net decal on the fuselage window strips then place a black backing decal that would cover out the emptiness. Not only would this create problems, since I cut my windows out of the strip - per below, but if you have ever seen a side shot of a Caribou, you can quite clearly see right through to the windows on the otherside. I've heard about a couple of different methods for overcoming this (putting red-net decal in between two plastic strips inside the fuselage to both distort and block out the emptiness) so you're best bet is to seek some opinions. I left mine as is using the method suggested by Hobbycraft knowing it was not really accurate but happy nonetheless.
The side windows along the fuselage are provided on one long strip to glue them all in at the same time, but these did not fit very well, leaving a slight indent on the fuselage. I decided to cut my windows from the strip and individually place them in the fuselage, and this worked very well, leaving a proper fit. Before glueing the fuselage halves together I added some weight in the nose at the recommendation of Hobbycraft who have not made this step entirely obvious in it's instructions. I think you will need it, and a couple of small lead sinkers should do the trick. The fuselage halves glued together quite easy and the cockpit sat nicely in its allocated position.
Next came the wings, canopy, engine and tailplanes which were a mixed bag of ease. I fitted the engine onto the assembled wings before attaching them to the fuselage. I had trouble with getting a good fit with the engine cowling and this required a bit of sanding and filling before success was achieved. There's not much detail in the engine area but this is negated by the fact that the engine cowling is quite small, which meant you weren't going to see a lot anyway. The wings and tailplanes were attached hassle-free while the canopy needed a minor amount of fixing to get a good fit, but was still relatively easy to fit in successfully.
The undercarriage did not churn out any real dramas and were adequate to support the weight of the model (including those sinkers!). Like the cockpit there is no internal wheel-well colour callout provided so only reference material can help you here - unfortunately all mine is in B&W. I ended up painting the struts white and the interior aluminium as best interpreted from my RAAF shots (the other alternative is perhaps colouring the landing gear struts silver). The only other noticeable point was that the wheels are very round - in real life the Caribous operated with low pressure tyres and these can be easily made out in most Caribou on-ground photos, making the model a little inaccurate if it's noticed.
With the model fully assembled you could notice a few other inaccuracies with it. Firstly, the nose area from underneath the cockpit to the nose-tip was slanted downward in a straight line. This was clearly incorrect, the Caribou had a rounded area from cockpit to nose and this is quite noticeable to anyone with a Caribou photo in their mind. You can overcome this by carefully moulding the nose with plasta-card or putty - I used the latter and with some delicate attention was able to get a reasonable correction. Other smaller detail like ventilation ducts and minor external detail furrows were not included in the model kit so I added these in (mainly around the nose area). The spine and side-fuselage walkway lines were too pronounced on the model, in photos they can hardly be seen but in real life you can clearly see that the aircraft has these lines stretching along the side of the fuselage and spine (especially RAAF Caribous). A little bit of sanding to get these down to a more subtle line will do the trick. The model also lacks any detail of antennae, bulges and other fairings that are found on the real aircraft. Even subtler but nonetheless important components were overlooked such as wingtip lights and windscreen wipers and these all have to be added yourself. I painted on my wipers and lights but the bulges and antennae were not so easy and most of them have been left-off.
Decals supplied in the kit are quite good quality and you have the choice of three operators to choose from - all based in the Vietnam war, hence the kit's name "Vietnam Caribou". A US Army example (as depicted on the box cover), South Vietnamese C-7 or an RAAF DHC-4 can be made with the selection of decals. I chose the RAAF version since they were the major operator of Caribous in that era and were the mainstay of the RAAF STOL transport fleet. Using correct reference sources I painted mine in an overall dark green, black anti-glare panel in front of the nose, kangaroo roundel, red fuselage lettering and yellow serial and this matches almost an exact colour example I have in a photo of a Vietnam based RAAF Caribou, 35 Sqn, South Vietnam.
As a whole, I am happy with the kit and it makes up a quite accurate overall representation of a relatively uncommon aircraft. It was good to see that Hobbycraft bit the bullet and produced a good quality kit of an untouched subject in this scale, however, there is a lot about it that I didn't like. I was very disappointed about the lack of interior detail including the cargo bay, the closed mold of the rear cargo door and the high price tag whose indication, one would expect to have included all these extra items. The subtle details like the nose and omission of fuselage fairings was also disappointing and makes the kit inaccurate in this area. For the sake of getting this subject then this kit is not a total loser and certainly has captured the look of a Caribou - but with all the extra work required, the price and disappointment, it's not one I would recommend Caribou fans to rush out and buy. While the kit is not really hard to build, given the extra work I would be ignoring it if I were of any skill less than intermediate.
Back to home
Kit Review Index: 1/72
1/48